Wed, October 13, 2010
Washington, D.C. InDesign User Group Home Meeting Summary Archive
Meeting Summary
Where has Michael been all my life? Awesome demo!!
Thu, May 14th, 2009 at 6:00 PM
U.S. Navy Memorial Auditorium
Event Details
What a great day we had on Thursday, May 14. For some people it was a very long day. As the sun was rising, people started arriving for the all-day session with Michael Murphy entitled, “InDesign by the Book.” This seminar focused on issues related to producing long documents with InDesign. In his inimitable fashion, mixing humor with well-thought-out instruction, Michael shared with the over 100 participants a number of ways to make production of long documents easier—and not only easier, but better looking, as well.
Many of the folks who attended the all-day seminar stayed around for the evening meeting, which featured speakers Hanaan Rosenthal of Custom Flow Solutions and Michael Murphy.
Hanaan demonstrated how scripting can be used to automate the production of complex graphs and tables. Scripting is daunting for many people, but Hanaan showed how powerful a tool it can be, and I think many were encouraged to give it a try.
During the meeting, Hanaan asked the attendees for a feature request. One member asked about listing all graphics that are not used in a layout. Right there, in front of everyone, Hanaan wrote a script which achieved the task that the group member asked for—it scans the contents of a folder, and then lists back all the graphics that are NOT used in the InDesign doc from which the script was run. Wow! Hanaan shared this script with all of us; you can download it at the bottom of this summary page.
Michael, not too exhausted from working such a long day, shared several tricks and tips while showing us how to create a form in InDesign that Acrobat will immediately recognize. While doing so, he showed us how to make great rules in forms and leader dots elsewhere.
To see more of Michael Murphy’s tips and tricks, including the ones he showed us on Thursday, go to http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-52-acrobat-friendly-form-design.
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IMPORTANT NOTICES AND REMINDERS
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If you have noticed the Word style mapping preset bug in the CS4 version of InDesign, and you want to see it fixed, please report it to Adobe. The more people who report it, the higher on the list of things to get fixed it will go. The problem occurs when mapping Word styles when importing a Word file. While you can still map the styles, you can no longer save them as a preset as before. So, if you have multiple files using the same Word styles, you will have to map them again and again each time you import a file. To report this bug (#2255226), go to http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform and fill out the form. You’ll be doing yourself and your friends a favor.
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Comments from attendees
“Expected Applescript to be dull, but was really interesting.”
“Wow. Scripting was cool. Opens up a whole new world.”
“The pizza is good.”
“Extremely interesting—will save a lot of time.”
“Scripting is great…makes me want to explore scripts that other people have made.”
“First time I’ve ever watched a scripting demo and was captivated the entire time.”
“Form tips & tricks—Awesome!”
“Michael Murphy was great, as usual.” (This was said dozens of times by others)
“Michael’s tips on character styles and forms are immediately useful. I will never do forms the old way again!”
Attached File/s
Photos From This Meeting
Photos are available from this user group meeting.
See the photos
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